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Gresham College Lectures

Gresham College

Gresham College has been providing free public lectures since 1597, making us London"s oldest higher education institution. This podcast offers our recorded lectures that are free to access from the Gresham College website, or our YouTube channel.

education

All Episodes

49:51

Just Ask The Axis: Jimi Hendrix unpicked - Milton...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/04/18

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/rKoYL4yrNsg Despite being cited as one of the most creative and influential guitarists of all time, and his tragically short life, Jimi Hendrix’s playing and composing are yet to be fully analysed. This lecture will demystify his diverse influences and reveal the full range of his extraordinary invention in terms of sonic sculpting, rhythmic feel, fretboard navigation, harmony, and composition. We explore this dazzling creativity from his earl...

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34:41

The Case for Basic Income - Guy Standing

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/04/15

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/cjJSWgvHZKw This lecture puts forth the ethical and economic case for a basic income, enabling financial security and therefore a better quality of life for all. Financial insecurity affects one’s ability to make rational decisions – studies show it even lowers short-term IQ – making it even harder to improve one’s circumstances in the long run. Furthermore, unlike means-tested social assistance schemes like Universal Credit, a basic inc...

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56:21

The Turbulent Brain: Rhythms and Waves - Alain Goriely

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/04/11

Despite its quiet appearance, the brain is the seat of complicated wave dynamics. Indeed, cognitive processes are carried out through communications between neurons, leading to synchronisation and oscillations at different frequencies that can be recorded. Together, these oscillations also create waves that propagate through different regions. Apart from this electrical activity, the brain is also the siege of slow chemical waves that can cause migraine and mechanical waves arising from traum...

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45:37

Banned Books and Freedom of Expression - Rachel Potter

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/04/04

The right to free expression is severely threatened in many places in the world, yet it has also never been so passionately defended. This lecture focuses on the recent history of banned literature. It considers the changing nature of literary censorship, arguments in defence of free expression, why literary writers have so frequently pushed the boundaries of the acceptable, and the impact of technology on censorship and free speech. This lecture was recorded by Rachel Potter on 12th March 2...

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58:14

Trust Issues: When Financial "Experts" Have Other...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/04/01

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/0jSUfa0LQAo This lecture examines agency problems in various relationships, including between investors and fund managers, and within financial intermediaries. This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on 3rd February 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Raghu is the Mercers School Memorial Professor of Business He is also the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School. The transcript of the lecture ...

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51:53

Carbon Offsetting: Does It Really Work? - Myles Allen

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/03/28

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/MB73qh4pIYM Offsets, politely called carbon credit markets, are essential to many net-zero strategies, yet remain highly controversial. They seem an efficient solution for “unavoidable” emissions – but who decides what is unavoidable? This lecture will discuss several plans to achieve our climate goals, from emission compensation schemes to tackling fossil fuels by planting trees. This lecture was recorded by Myles Allen on 4th Ma...

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59:06

Is the First Amendment the greatest right of all? -...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/03/21

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/W5EKhMWdjP4 In this lecture we will discuss a hierarchy of rights. Is the American First Amendment the most important of all, given its five foundational rights – no establishment of religion; free exercise of religion; freedom of speech and the press; the right peaceably to assemble; the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. How might this apply to the UK? This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on 27th Febr...

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45:12

The Biggest Cosmic Map - Chris Lintott

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/03/18

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/TRCkgDWKTdY Mapping the stars is, perhaps, the oldest of astronomical pursuits, but it has been perfected by the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, which is providing an exquisitely precise map showing the positions and movements of the nearest two billion stars. Starting with a history of mapping the cosmos, this lecture describes the new and dynamic history of our Milky Way galaxy that results, and will move to explaining the dynamic and ...

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50:21

Data: A Love Story for the Ages - Victoria Baines

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/03/14

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/7mW52bW23go It has become something of a cliché to say that data is the new oil. That isn’t the full story. For centuries it has proved itself to be infinitely re-usable. It has enabled the creation and reinforcement of collective memory. It has been documented in innumerable formats, from maps to databases, taxonomies, and infographics. We make sense of the world through the technology we use to process and visualise data. This lecture is an ...

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45:42

The Return of the Horned God - Ronald Hutton

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/03/11

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/IAilwM_WdbI Until the nineteenth century, the favourite ancient pagan gods in Western culture were those related to human qualities and activities. During that century, especially in Britain, attention switched to a horned divinity associated with the countryside and wild nature, usually personified as the Greek Pan. This lecture explores how and why this happened, and the impact on British culture, when the full subversive potential of this d...

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45:34

Green Immunity – How Do Plants Fight Infection? -...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/03/11

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Et8_myknHq8 Most of us rarely think about plant immunity. But, like us, plants can distinguish between different pathogens, trigger a ‘bespoke’ immune response and retain a memory of past infections to boost future immunity. However, plant immune systems also exhibit enviable features like the ability to inherit immunological memory from a parent, or to warn distant individuals of an impending pathogen attack. This lecture investigates how the...

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46:35

Unwritten Laws? Legacies from Antigone and Lycurgus -...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/03/04

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gQdabAQT3Jw Sophocles’ Antigone refers to “unwritten laws,” as does Thucydides’ Pericles. From the late fifth century BCE, the idea that laws are more effective when learned by memory and observation than when put into writing, forms a distinctive current in political reflections. Plutarch would even claim that the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus had prohibited the writing down of his laws. This lecture will present Greek authors’ reflections on the...

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36:56

The Value of Public Space - Liza Fior

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/02/28

As we navigate towns and cities, public spaces are all around us. These offer a respite from our often-busy routines. Public spaces are more than just the leftover areas between buildings; they depend on how interests are designed and negotiated, and its success is measured by the interactions that take place in it: the passage of the sun, the root of trees, and even the way they are used by children. However, these areas are constantly threatened by the way local and commercial funding inves...

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50:32

The UK’s Generational Wealth Gap - Mike Brewer

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/02/28

The UK's income inequality has remained stable since the 1990s, but household wealth has nearly doubled, mainly driven by soaring house prices. This has widened the wealth gap between generations, with younger people less likely to own homes. Furthermore, weak income growth since the mid-2000s has disproportionately affected younger cohorts. This lecture unpacks these economic trends to reveal how they have created tensions between generations by exacerbating disparities in their respective l...

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58:26

Why Does Britain Have a Water and Sewage Crisis? -...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/02/27

The discharge of raw sewage into rivers, and the financial problems of major water companies, have become serious political and social concerns for the public. British cities have faced similar challenges in the past, most notoriously with the ‘Great Stink’ in London in 1858 that led to the construction of Bazalgette’s sewer. Consequently, many cities took utilities into public ownership in the late nineteenth century in what is termed ‘gas and water socialism’. Why did this happen, and why w...

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56:33

The Hidden Risks of "I Know Something You Don't" -...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/02/21

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/7pvF4FdbYWU This lecture explores how information asymmetry leads to adverse selection and moral hazard, with a focus on their presence in financial markets and institutions such as insurance and credit markets. It will examine how regulations intended to solve a particular set of issues might exacerbate problems, potentially resulting in financial crises or other disastrous events. This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on 20th January...

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54:29

Is Your Money Safe? Unveiling Hidden Conflicts in...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/02/14

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gWJmpSO4WZI Finance involves a group of people attempting to make rational decisions on valuation, but people are complicated. People can be self-interested, they can make mistakes, or, in stark contrast, they can act altruistically. This lecture will introduce the concept of agency problems in the finance sector, focusing on the conflicts that arise between different groups of stakeholders. It will discuss examples of fraud, insider trading a...

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56:25

The Connected Brain: Network and Communication -...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/02/11

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/bKMV8i9Mq40 The brain is mostly organised in small modular regions connected to each other. Typically, each region performs different cognitive tasks, from image processing to language. This organisation leads us to model the brain as a network, the ‘brain connectome’. This fundamental view of the brain has become a central paradigm for neurosciences linking topological properties of networks to brain functions. This lecture presents ideas fro...

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54:38

Breaking the Fourth Wall of Sound: The Paradox of...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/02/07

Sound and music hold a strange and powerful role in film, TV and video games, aiding narrative and emotional impact. They can even exist in the world of ‘the film’ – heard by the characters – or in the world of the audience. Music can even break the fourth wall, travelling through and blurring these conventionally separate worlds. By examining films through history from Blazing Saddles, Elf, The Truman Show to Birdman, we explore this ‘fantastical gap’ and its transformative effect on the aud...

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58:53

‘Is it in Pevsner?’: A Short History of the...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/02/04

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/LUyFLOUi-D4 This lecture traces the history of this famous series by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, starting from its conception in 1947. It describes the research and writing of the original forty-six volumes for England and the extension of the books to Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It then assesses their significance alongside a reflection on the 2024 achievement of the full updating of the English series. This lecture was recorded by Charles O'Brie...

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186 results

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